A race against time to stave off imminent eviction, with added peril due to a misunderstanding over a rare pair of Nike Air Jordan trainers, One of Them Days walks a relatively familiar buddy movie path. Dreux (Keke Palmer) and Alyssa (SZA) are best friends and roommates in a cheap and cheerful apartment in LA’s Baldwin Village. But then Alyssa’s feckless boyfriend spends the rent money and the women have until the end of the day to raise the cash.
With its zingy colour palette and effervescent, unapologetically uneven storytelling, the film has a buoyant, almost cartoonish quality (albeit one laced with lip-smacking, sexually explicit dialogue). What elevates this raucous romp by music video director Lawrence Lamont is the crackling energy between Palmer (Nope) and singer SZA, making her acting debut here. Dreux also gets a love interest, in the shape of a mysterious hunk named Maniac (Patrick Cage). But Dreux and Alyssa, with their sparky chemistry and crisp comic sparring, is the only relationship we care about.
In UK, Irish and Australian cinemas
